The present invention relates generally to the use, inventory tracking, and recycling of instruments used in surgical procedures.
Most hospitals perform numerous surgical procedures each day, requiring a complex and labor intensive system of instrument de, contamination, inspection, and sterilization. In addition, to accommodate the need for rapid turnover of operating rooms between procedures, a large inventory of instruments and related equipment must be maintained at the hospital so that procedures will not be delayed while waiting for clean and sterile instruments. Obviously, valuable floor and shelf space in the surgical suite must be dedicated to such inventory, as well as to equipment for the cleaning, inspection, and sterilization of the instruments.
Often, surgical instruments and related equipment are damaged or substantially degraded during use, necessitating repair before they can be used again. To achieve an adequate level of performance in the inspection and repair of such instruments, employees having a relatively high skill level are needed. Moreover, many reusable surgical instruments are not designed for ease of repair, having components which are not readily disassembled. Consequently, expensive instruments and materials must be discarded, even if only a small part of the instrument is worn or defective.
These problems, and a corresponding fear of inadequate decontamination and sterilization, has lead to the wide spread use of disposable instruments, particularly for laparoscopic and other minimal invasive procedures. While these disposable instruments are presumably in operative condition and completely sterile, their use has created new problems. First, disposing of the used instruments, which can be accompanied by hazardous contaminated waste, must be done in an environmentally responsible manner. Further, the use of disposable instruments has substantially added to the cost of providing these surgical procedures in a hospital environment.
What is needed, then, is a system for maintaining an adequate but not excessive inventory of surgical instruments, for repair, sterilization, and recycling of reusable surgical instruments, and a system which will result in lower cost to the hospital and hopefully to the consumer of medical services. Such a system is presently lacking in the prior art.